As a team, we read the 100-year old texts written by traveler and trader Julius Konietzko, who visited the Halligen with a similar interest in this salty, amphibious land and who had gathered the objects we were tasked to work with and embed within the Halligen today. As an collector, he documented in detail flora (“a land so often covered with saltwater that it lacks trees with the exception of a few crippled fruit trees and elderberry bushes” (1930/31: 35)); the fauna (“people don´t keep ducks or geese because they soil precious freshwater that people collect from rain … instead they keep a few cows, pigs, and sheep” (1930/31: 1)) and the people (“these island-Frisians [Inselfriesen], live like little kings on their Warften,” the most important part of which “is the attic, where valuable things are kept in case of floods (1930/31:46)). Konietzko described how the Halligen were criss-crossed by carefully cared-for tidal creeks called Priele, which run through the marshland like meandering veins (1930/31: 36).  The Priele are a way for the water to run off after high tides, but they could fill up with water quickly and become quite dangerous. Konietzko put emphasis on how the people put much labor into keeping the land from being torn away by the sea – diligently fortifying the banks and shores with dense stone packages and strips of sod sown together with hay (1930/31: 36).

All life, Konietzko noted, was oriented toward the sea. Frerk Johannsen, a descendant of seafarers and born Halliger, told us during an interview that the Halligen men were in particular demand during the 19th century as whalers since they were so adept at reading water and wind, moon and sun.  Even the language of North Frisian, still spoken today by a few older inhabitants on Langeneß, is linguistically closer to English than it is to German. The linguistic proximity between Frisian and English implies that it was the watery pathways of the North Sea, and not landed travel, that bound together these intercommunicating seafaring populations. 

The Halligen were a cosmopolitan space – after all, the oceans are connectors of worlds. Konietzko found many objects that seafarers had brought back to with them to the Halligen from their travels - Chinese porcelain, Pacific Sea and snail shells, and smooth and round glass stones (“Gnidelsteine”) used by women to fix socks that seem to have been imported from the Mediterranean and that people referred to as “fossilized whale eyes.” People on the Halligen also harvested bamboo and rattan, a significant amount of which was regularly washed up from the sea. Konietzko insisted that the brooms and baskets that the people on the Halligen made out of these matrials were strikingly similar to objects that he had seen while traveling in East Asia.

People lived off the sea. Konietzko described its “infinite gifts” page after page, from its fish, which people caught in nets or speared, to vast fields of tasty mussels and clams, seal meat, shrimps, sea gull eggs, ducks, sea grasses, and eels (1930/31: 15).  Konietzko noted that the people on the Halligen spent a large part of their lives wandering around the wide Wadden sea, looking for food and flotsam and visiting neighbors on other Halligen or the mainland. Everything was taken from the sea – the limestone won out of seashells was used to smooth out and cover up bricks. Houses were covered in reeds and turf. Fans to fan fires were made out of sea gull feathers, and lamps were lit with porpoise or seal oil up until shortly before Konietzko conducted his travels. People slept in bedding filled with the soft feathers of sea birds. Seegrass blown onto the shores was dried and mattresses stuffed with it. Houses were adorned with white and blue tiles featuring windmills, ships, and sea serpents. The sea was also medicine - pulverized sepia (octopus) was given to sheep against dysentery, while maritime sea wormwood (artemisia maritima) was used by the island Frisians again fleas. Even the children were not brought by storks (there were none) but “fished by their parents out of the sea” (Konietzko 1930/31: 190).

“The character of the land has shaped the character of the people and affixes its stamp on its peculiar material culture,” wrote Konietzko. “Frisians desire to be free and independent. They prefer to be in constant battle with the stormy North Sea (its hurricane-like gusts were referred to as the “naked Hans” (“blanke Hans”)) and stare death in the eye rather than engage in regulated, uniform work. That is the main feature of their character.” Accordingly, the sea took away as well. Many people were lost at sea or vanished in the fog of the Wadden Sea. Until today, the dictum of the freedom of the seas is inscribed the North Frisian flag: “Lever düd as Slav” – rather dead than slave – it says.